Axis History Forum

This is an apolitical forum for discussions on the Axis nations and related topics hosted by the Axis History Factbook in cooperation with Christian Ankerstjerne’s Panzerworld and Christoph Awender's WW2 day by day.
Founded in 1999.

Thanks Miles. It’s a good example of how a ductile holing event can have crack formation started if the impact is too close to a free edge, like here (1-1,5 cal distant).
Whether or not this lowered the limit velocity is unclear. The interlocked plates supported the edge until fairly late in the penetration.It should be ok except for any secondary impacts close to the area affected.

A report titled "Conclusions about fighting and technical qualities of ISU-122 SPGs and IS-2 heavy tanks." sent 15th of March 1945 to the commander of armored and mechanized forces of the 1st Ukrainian front general-colonel Nikolai Novikov says, among other things:

"ISU-152 and IS-122 posses a powerful weaponry which at a distance of 1300m penetrates armour of the enemy "Tiger" and "Panther" tanks. When fired upon a "Panther" tank from a distance of 2000m from the front the armor piercing shell ricochets without holing the armor. Accuracy is good. Gun firing from distances of 1500-2000m has a negligible dispersion and can destroy any fortification."

"ISU-152 and IS-122 posses a powerful weaponry which at a distance of 1300m penetrates armour of the enemy "Tiger" and "Panther" tanks

In that case how does the 1,200 meters ( 122 mm vs a Tiger I E) & 600-700 meters (122 mm vs Panther) figures fit into this? Those figures were from a soviet 1944 test as well.... varying quality as Rexford's booklet suggests? Is report generalizing the two taking the biggest figure?

"ISU-152 and IS-122 posses a powerful weaponry which at a distance of 1300m penetrates armour of the enemy "Tiger" and "Panther" tanks

In that case how does the 1,200 ( vs Tiger) & 600-700 meter (vs Panther) figures fit into this? those were supposedly from a soviet 1944 test as well.

Note that it says "penetrates at" not "penetrates up to". This is not a technical document it's a summary of practical experience the front line troops. This is likely was not intended to be taken as the maximum range this gun could penetrate armour of these targets but rather the average distance from which they were successfully engaged, and is dependent of other variables as well like accuracy, eventual presence of additional side angle ecc.

Since this is a document from 1945, here the soviet vehicles likely used the newer 122mm BR-471B AP shells with windshield which would have extended the effective range relative to the earlier results obtained.

Read post #6 above. As the war progressed, men were taken from factories and males up to 16 years old and women were impressed into use to replace them. There are thousands of archive pages available to study Russian Armor makers and AP factories if one is so inclined. Easier to produce sharp nose 100 and 122 mm AP were sent to combat units. Germans defending Berlin did not face the B models of these rounds. Incorrect Russian firing tables combined with firing tests against German tanks using FT flawed data made Russian projectile experts assume that it was not necessary to use B model 100 and 122 mm APBC against such panzers as Tigers I and II as well as the Panther. In 1951 American translations of the Russian firing tables used in WW II were issued on a restricted basis. See the pages below. No B models for the 100 and 122 AP rounds were listed for use by any Russian FT, as the Germans also noted earlier when they obtained Soviet FT copies from captured SU85, SU100 and 122 mm AFV.

You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

Last edited by Miles Krogfus on 29 Mar 2020 00:14, edited 6 times in total.

Read post #6 above. As the war progressed, men were taken from factories and males up to 16 years old and women were impressed into use to replace them. There are thousands of archive pages available to study Russian Armor makers and AP factories if one is so inclined. Thus easier to produce sharp nose 100 and 122 mm AP were sent to combat units. Germans defending Berlin did not face the B models of these rounds.

Have you found among those archive pages any documents indicating that this was the case, without leaving room for interpretation? Then, please, feel free to share them with us.

The ranges reported here fit together quite nicely with the charts I've posted earlier for 122mm BR-471B against Panther glacis(85mm/55°) without the need for introducing any additional entities, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor